#1 – Gold Coast
Commonwealth Games

The Gold Coast put on a show for sports fans in April with
the city playing host to the 2018 Commonwealth Games. They were the first Games
on Australian soil since Melbourne back in 2006.

Western Australia produced 31 members of the Australian team,
with all but one of those members getting the opportunity to compete on the big
stage. In an impressive series of results, 20 WA members returned home with medals
– including multiple medal performances from Madison de Rozario, Sam
Welsford and Brianna Throssell.

Whilst it’s impossible to single out one effort over
another, some of the key performances included;

Sam
Welsford winning gold – in world record time – as part of the Australian
men’s team pursuit

Cameron
Meyer defying the odds to win an individual time-trial gold medal on the
road, off a limited preparation after he’d surprisingly missed out in the men’s
points race on the track.

Brianna
Throssell snaring gold in the women’s 4x200 freestyle relay after she’d
missed out on the 4x100 team by a whisker

Caitlin
Bassett and Courtney Bruce –
despite the heartbreak of defeat – playing in one of the all-time great gold
medal finals in the netball

#2 – Belinda
Stowell recognised as one of the greats!

Whilst we’ve known it for years, WAIS sailing coach Belinda Stowell was officially honoured
as a great of Western Australian sport when she received induction into the WA
Hall of Champions.

The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games gold medallist became just the
second WA sailor to earn the honour after the great Rolly Tasker.

Stowell’s sporting career would rival that of any athlete in
this state and her legacy to sport – particularly through her passion for
sailing – continues to be well served through her work with WA’s emerging
sailors through the WA Institute of Sport.

She is a treasure!

#3 – Magical Meyer
makes it rainbow number nine

Cameron Meyer has
achieved so much for someone so young that his achievements are almost taken
for granted by those who don’t see how much effort he puts into making them
happen.

At the 2018 Track World Championships in the Netherlands,
Meyer won an incredible ninth career rainbow jersey in his prized points race
event. It was the fifth time he’d won the event and in typical fashion, it came
in dominant Meyer style. A combination of tactical nous and pure endurance excellence.

He also collected a bronze medal in the Madison, competing
in tandem with Australian teammate Callum Scotson, and with the Madison
returning to the Olympic track cycling program of events for Tokyo 2020, don’t
rule out Meyer adding an Olympic medal to his impressive career resume before
he’s done with the sport.

Before then however, he will continue to divide his time
between track and road as he continues to forge a career that marks him as one
of the best cyclists this state has seen.

#4 – A time to say
goodbye

Two highly respected, long-term scholarship talents at WAIS
called time on their sporting careers in 2018 with dual Paralympic wheelchair
basketball medallist Clare Nott and
Olympic sprint kayaker Steve Bird announcing their retirement from sport.

Both had been regular members of their respective national
teams, with Nott winning medals at both the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games,
whilst Bird made finals in both London 2012 and Rio 2016 in addition to a volume
of national championship titles.

They were both panel members of an Athlete QandA at the 2018
WAIS Awards in November, sharing stories, insights and reflections along with
pole vaulter Kurtis Marschall. Whilst
their stories were individual and unique, they both shared a common theme of making
the decision to end their representative careers on their own terms.

Clare penned an excellent blog exploring the theme of
retirement which can be viewed here.

#5 – Wearn wins
top award

The WAIS Athlete of the Year award always attracts an excellent
spread of challengers from year to year, but is quite possible that 2018 was
the hardest year to determine in recent memory.

From field of nine nominations, such was the excellence of
the performances that seven were viewed as finalists for the prize.

Cameron Meyer’s performances in 2018 are reflected in appreciation above, but Sam Welsford’s achievements too deserve
great plaudits. A world record at the Commonwealth Games, was followed by a win
in the Scratch Race that barely seemed possible. He set times in the final lap
that rivalled those capable of a specialist sprinter. The win, was one for the
ages.

David Watts stroked the Australian men’s quad scull crew to a silver medal at the 2018 World
Championships in Bulgaria and the crew now possess the quality to deliver a world
class performance in an Olympic class event. He is one of the elder statesmen
of Australian rowing and has built a formidable list of representative feats.

Aran Zalewski is
another who would have been a worthy winner, after he added an individual Tournament MVP
award to the Champions Trophy title he captained the Kookaburras to in the
Netherlands. This followed a gold medal at April’s Commonwealth Games.

Shaun Norris captained the Australian Rollers to a bronze medal at the World Championships
in Germany and in doing so, he once again proved that he is one of the very
best proponents of his craft in the world. This is a status he’s held for close
to two decades and he shows no signs of slowing down ahead of a fifth potential
Paralympic Games.

Aaron Younger was
the tournament MVP at the World Cup in Germany as the Australian Sharks team that
he skippered made history by winning silver, which represented the nation’s
best ever result at that level in men’s water polo.

It was however, Matt
Wearn who received the title of WAIS Athlete of the Year after he completed
an incredible season of competition to medal at every single major regatta he
contested, which included silver at the World Championships in Denmark. He took
silver at the Tokyo Test event and won gold at the European Championships, in
addition to medalling regularly in world cup competition – marking an excellent
year.

In achieving his peak result in an Olympic class event, at
the highest competition standard outside of the Olympic Games, selectors deemed
that his peak performance ranked higher than those achieved at Commonwealth
Games or similarly field restricted – or lower classification – international
competitions.

At 23 years of age, Wearn is held in the highest regard. Not
only for his sailing ability, but through his conduct and engagement at all
levels of high performance.

Honourable notes:

WA’s representatives who represented the country
with such aplomb at the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Korea.

The many outstanding performances in Junior
World Championship competition that WA’s best and brightest produced in 2018.

The highly productive Talent ID day hosted at
WAIS that helped unearth future high performance cyclists, canoeists and
rowers.

The multiple WA athletes who earned progression
as graduates into national team programs.

The numerous outstanding PhD and Honours projects
supported through the WA High Performance Sport Research Centre.